Caliper Life Sciences, Inc and Amphora Discovery Corp. announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement for Caliper to acquire certain technology developed by Amphora for cell-based screening assays.

Amphora, a privately held company that employs Caliper's microfluidics technology as a key element in developing high-value drugs for the pharmaceutical industry, has developed broad assay expertise for a number of target classes.

Under the terms of the agreement, Amphora will transfer to Caliper its proprietary cell culture techniques, as well as various hardware and software upgrades that Amphora has implemented on Caliper's proprietary microfluidic screening system. In exchange, Caliper will compensate Amphora through a combination of cash, Caliper products, and royalties based on future sales of cell-based assays. Caliper will incorporate the acquired technology into a new calcium-flux assay to provide versatility, ease-of-use and high-quality, single-cell data for scientists studying G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) targets.

With the new assay in place, users of Caliper's LabChip 3000 Drug Discovery System will be able to choose from a broad selection of cell lines, either adherent or suspended, for their assay. Cell lines that were previously not well-suited to microfluidic-based assays, such as HEK-293, will be viable choices. Requiring only 1000 cells per well, the new assay eliminates the requirement for extensive cell culture facilities and enables screeners to study cells that are in short supply (e.g., blood platelets and neurons), thereby opening up an area of study that is inaccessible to standard microplate-based technologies.

"We are excited by Amphora's work and pleased to be acquiring this technology from Amphora," said Kevin Hrusovsky, President and Chief Executive Officer at Caliper. "Caliper and Amphora have developed a truly symbiotic relationship, as evidenced by Amphora's recent announcement regarding their agreement with Aventis to deploy Caliper's microfluidics technology on a global scale (see related news at http://www.amphoracorp.com/news/pr033004.html ). We believe that the more ways we can get people involved with our microfluidics technology, the better, and the Aventis-Amphora collaboration is one more sign of the accelerating pace of microfluidics adoption."

Marty Haslanger, CEO, at Amphora, commented, "Amphora has built a wealth of accomplishments in lead discovery, driven by our innovations in assay development and microfluidic applications. We are delighted to work with Caliper to commercialize our innovations. Lead discovery will benefit from rapid access to more precise assays with higher biological content as a result of these cell-based assays. We look forward to working with Caliper to provide this important advancement to the screening community."

Scientists from Amphora are speaking about the new cell technologies at various conferences, including this week's MipTec 2004 conference in Basel, Switzerland and CHI's Intelligent Drug Discovery and Development meeting May 17-19 in Philadelphia, PA.